- by MARXISTS.org https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hpboehme.htm
WE now pass on from this English Lord Chancellor, the leader of the external, sensuous method in Philosophy, to the philosophus teutonicus, as he is called — to the German cobbler of Lusatia, of whom we have no reason to be ashamed. It was, in fact, through him that Philosophy first appeared in Germany with a character peculiar to itself: Boehme stands in exact antithesis to Bacon. He was also called theosophus teutonicus, just as even before this philosophia teutonica was the name given to mysticism.(1) This Jacob Boehme was for long forgotten and decried as being simply a pious visionary; the so-called period of enlightenment, more particularly, helped to render his public extremely limited. Leibnitz thought very highly of him, but it is in modern times that his profundity has for the first time been recognized, and that he has been once more restored to honour. It is certain, on the one hand, that he did not merit the disdain accorded him; on the other, however, he did not deserve the high honour into which he was elevated. To call him an enthusiast signifies nothing at all. For if we will, all philosophers may be so termed, even the Epicureans and Bacon; for they all have held that man finds his truth in something else than eating and drinking, or in the common-sense every-day life of wood-cutting, tailoring, trading, or other business, private or official. But Boehme has to attribute the high honour to which he was raised mainly to the garb of sensuous feeling and perception which he adopted; for ordinary sensuous perception and inward feeling, praying and yearning, and the pictorial element in thought, allegories and such like, are in some measure held to be essential in Philosophy. But it is only in the Notion, in thought, that Philosophy can find its truth, and that the Absolute can be expressed and likewise is as it is in itself. Looked at from this point of view, Boehme is a complete barbarian, and yet he is a man who, along with his rude method of presentation, possesses a deep, concrete heart. But because no method or order is to be found in him, it is difficult to give an account of his philosophy.
Jacob Boehme was born in 1575 of poor parents, at Altseidenburg, near Görlitz, in Upper Lusatia. In h
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The Stolen Kingdom (March 2021) by Jillian Boehme is a stand-alone YA fantasy novel about the heirs of two families who find their paths entangled by the political machinations and magical legacies of their forbears.
Maralyth Graylaern ('Mara' to her friends) is the daughter of a vintner in the kingdom of Perin Faye. Though she uses her secret magical talents to increase the yield of their harvests, her family is struggling under the excessive tithes of the Thungrave king. Despite her caution, her magic comes to the attention of a scheming lord who understands the implications of her natural-born powers, and kidnaps her to force her involvement in a coup attempt. Prince Alac, the second son of the king, is troubled by the dark effects of his own family's magical power, which was stolen through blood magic from the previous dynasty. Despite his lack of ambition to the throne (he'd really rather study winemaking and set up a vineyard somewhere away from court once his older brother inherits), his accidental discovery of Mara's magic leads him to realize that the two of them have a means to potentially fix the rot—both magical and non-magical—at the heart of the kingdom.
Mara's and Alac's perspectives alternate, and in the Recorded Books audiobook version, their chapters are voiced respectively by Suzy Jackson and Kirby Heyborne. Both were straightforward, satisfactory narrators, though neither imbued their characters with more than a minimum of personality or emotion. I would have liked to hear them make the characters their own a little more, as it would have added a lot to the book.
Though I was initially discouraged by the slow pacing at the start, the plot really picked up in the second half. Mara and Alac, both likeable and interesting characters, take an instant shine to each other when they meet at court, and their relationship has a satisfactory arc that manages to convey their mutual attraction without being an unbelievable love-at-first-sight scenario. There's definitely a light romance plotline, but it plays second, or possibly third, fiddle to the political plot and their quest to understand what's going on with magic in Perin Faye.
My biggest complaint is that the magic is pretty simplistic, for all the mystery with which it is initially presented. The book is slow to reveal much of any interest that can b
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“Magic is the mother of eternity, of the being of all beings; for it creates itself, and is understood in desire. It is in itself nothing but a will and this will is the great mystery of all wonders and secrets, but brings itself into imagination or figuration itself by the imagination of the desireful hunger into being. It is the original state of Nature. Its desire makes an imagination, and imagination or figuration is only the will of desire. But desire makes in the will such a being as the will in itself is.” -
